The Sherman Independent School Board received an update on student performance and accountability reporting efforts Monday night. District administration gave a presentation with new information on results driven accountability reporting focused on special populations alongside an update on the annual Texas Academic Performance Report.
“Tonight I will be presenting on our RDA, which is results driven accountability and also our Texas Academic Performance Report, or TAPR from the 2023-2024 school year,” SISD Chief Academic Officer Amy Pesina said.
The district reported significant improvement on performance with its special populations, with determination levels and student performance levels improving in multiple categories. However, some members of the school board expressed concern over the results of TAPR results, with a focus on how results from the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness were presented.
The RDA looks at the performance of students in three categories and places the district in one multiple categories ranging from “meets requirements” to “needs substantial intervention.” The populations assessed include emergent bilingual students and those who speak English as a second language, special education students, and other special populations, including the homeless, foster children and those involved in the military.
Performance was evaluated based on academic achievement, post-secondary readiness and disproportionate analysis, which involves program representation and discipline.
“So, meets requirements means it meets the requirements established by the state,” Pesina said. “Needs assistance means this is an area to look at and has some additional focus. Usually that will mean we put a strategy in place on the campus and also within our campus improvement plan.”
The RDA report saw an improvement in all three populations between 2022 and 2023, with the bilingual students shifting from the second category, “needs assistance,” to meeting state requirements. Meanwhile the special education and other special population groups shifted from category three, “needs intervention,” to category two.
The district saw improvement in specific courses and topics as well, with increases to performance level throughout the report. Student performance is categorized with scores ranging from zero, which represents state standards to category three, which represents a need for significant invention to get up to standard.
Student performance in algebra I, English I and English II rose from performance level three to level 2. Performance in biology and U.S. History increased from performance level two and one, respectively, to meeting state standards.
Despite these increases, the district fell slightly in its performance with regard to disciplinary removals related to the special education. The report found that the district “needs significant intervention” with regard to removals, with African American students seeing a 2.7 percent higher rate of removal for disciplinary reasons when compared to other students.
Meanwhile, the TAPR report looked at data from recent school years and compared the district to both state and Region 10 averages in multiple categories, including graduation rates and other performance areas.
The district saw similar attendance rates to state and regional averages for the 2023-2024 school year and edged out both in terms of drop out rate and graduation rates. The district saw just 1.6 percent of students drop out over the school year, while state and regional averages were 2 percent and 2.5 percent, respectively.
The district saw increases in its percentage of students who met college, career and military readiness thresholds between the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 school years. While overall readiness rose from 51.7 percent to 59.2 percent, the largest increase was seen in students receiving industry-based certifications, which rose from 20.2 percent to 36.4 percent.
Despite these increases, officials said there was still room for improvement.
“We recognize this is not where we want to be, so we do have a CCMR committee at Sherman High that is working very closely on improving those areas this year,” Pesina said.
While many data points included comparisons to state and regional scores, or previous years, this was not included in the report of students who performed well on the 2024 STAAR test.
Board Member Sean Vanderveer asked if the scores that number of students who scored at the “approaches grade level” or above on the test was on par with previous years.
“The answer is no,” said Board Member David Tarvin. “All of the numbers pretty much went down.”
Vanderveer said he would like to see comparative data in the future so that there is context to the numbers. Pesina said this data would be possible, but she intended to focus Monday’s report on only the data included in the recent TAPR.
“I think what Sean’s getting at — and I am with you there — I think for transparency’s sake, I personally would like to see a 23-24 comparison up there,” Tarvin said. “I would also like to see what they put up there for the state and region just so the public has an idea of the fact we are way below state average on these things. We have got to work to fix that.”
While scores in reading and saw overall increases in higher grade levels, the report found students continued to struggle in math courses. The report for 2024 found that 56 percent of students approached grade level standard and this rose to 61 percent for fifth grades this year.
“When you look at math performance, it ranges from 55 to 61 percent,” Pesina said. “It does indicate that there is a consistent challenge across grade levels.”
The report also included data based on end of course exam performance. The report found that 62 and 72 percent of students approached grade level performance or above in English I and English II, respectively. Meanwhile, 91 percent of students met this threshold for Biology, and 96 percent of students performed at this level in U.S. History.
